[Personal Work] Cyriss Reflex Servitors

The next models in the army I chose to work on were the Reflex Servitors. These little guys have some interesting rules, with advance deployment, counter charge, pathfinder and dig in, they lurk at the fore of your army and blow themselves up on contact with the enemy.

The models themselves are pretty easy (one part models, something I miss greatly from the MKI days), with little major clean up. There are a few things to bear in mind when building these (and all other servitors, as well as anything else that PP may chose to put on their new flight stands in the future). 

Firstly, much like with GW's stands, the socket designed to accommodate the tip of the stand is not really fit for purpose. You will not get a decent connection and your models will keep breaking off the stand if you don't take some steps. Grab a large drill bit (I use one from an electric drill I use to build my scenery and tables). Use this to bore out a large, deep socket that fully encloses the top of the flight stand. This should lightly grip the model to make sure your connection is tight.

The next thing to bear in mind is that the flight stand is designed to fit in to the standard bases, which have an off center slot. If you look at the tab on the flight stand, you will notice that it does not cit central to the piece. Make sure you get it glued in the right way round to keep the stand central, or else your servitors will be flying very off centre.

The final issue I had was that the flight stands are made of a fairly "greasy" plastic which does not really take to superglue very well at all. I ended up using a combination of the depth of the sockets I drilled, and a small blob of blu tac (green stuff would be better but I didn't have any mixed and the blu tac was by my light). This will react oddly with the super glue and cause it to go off slightly and set faster. I do not advise doing this on most minis (though some swear by the trick) as it gives a weaker bond, but for a piece like this it helps set the glue slightly, allowing you to leave it to one side to properly bond while you work on other things.

You can see on the finished assembly, I pre based the model, as well as undercoated it as a whole, meaning the flight stand is not clear. Ultimately I am not too bothered about see through parts, and this army will not be a display/comp piece, so I want to make it as quick and painless as possible.  Again, for a comp piece, I would have a very different method, but I want these guys on the table and painted ASAP.

In terms of painting, I chose to stick to the studio scheme. I don't tend to do this, and had visions of a khaki/weathered army. Ultimately, speed over ruled creativity, and I can drybrush metal when I have to.

The full six were painted from undercoat to finished in one sitting (I broke for lunch in the middle) and I think they took about three hours total. So thirty mins per ball, which isn't  too bad. I have plenty more models to paint and really can't make this a major endevour . Overall I think they look fine on the table and the quicker I can get these done, the more time I can spend on the more important parts like the casters and the Prime Axiom.

I used the paint guide in the Cyriss book, but used washing and layering with some drybrushing to keep it quick and dirty. I will be blending on the casters as they will be the focus of the army, but for the rank and file I don't think they need it.

Hopefully there is some useful information that you can use in building and painting your Cyriss. Next up will some Angels I think.

[Personal Work] Convergence of Cyriss - Light Vectors

I thought I would start out my chronicle of the building and painting of my Convergence with some of the jacks. The main draw of this force (for me at least) is the chance to run far more jack heavy than I would in my usual warmachine games.

I started with the light vectors as there would be no magnetising needed. Due to the way PP sell their light kits, you don't end up with multiple weapons configurations per box, so there would be no need to make any combi-jacks.

Opening up the five kits I had aquired, I was faced with a mess of parts (only three of the kits are shown here).

Each vector has the same core chassis, three legs, a lower and upper chassis and enough knee pads to cover their modesty. The slight difference comes with the Mitigator and Diffuser, which use the small round plug to attach the arms, and the Galvinizer which instead has those arms plug into its head unit.

I had decided to abandon my plans of clever colour schemes and top end painting as I want to get the army on the table as quickly as possible. As such I have resigned myself to the studio scheme (something I rarely do) and am not doing as thorough a clean up job as I normally would (just as well as restic/hard plastic/spruless plastic continues to be a pain to properly clean up).

Just as well as I found all five of the kits had suffered the same miscast on the lower chassis. Each one has three engine block details , and one of these had been blown out in molding in each case.

In terms of building, there is nothing too drastic to worry about with the kit. The only issue I had was that there are two leg designs with the kit, one of which is extended straighter. I found that upon assembling the mini, I was left with a very lopsided jack, with one longer leg, leaving the other two feet floating.

I decided to mitigate this by matching up identical legs where possible (on of the benefits of buying on masse I suppose), which left me four jacks standing properly, and one that will need a small rock to prop up his one smaller leg.

Having messed around with the heavies, I found similar issues, and this may well have been dealt with by heating up the legs and reposing. Certainly this was necessary with the heavy I have assembled so far.  Its not the end of the world, but something to keep in mind when building your vectors.

As previously mentioned, the Galvinizer, with his buzz saw arm, assembles slightly differently to his fellows, with his arms in his head, and the connection points at his waist cleverly serving double duty as "glowy bits".

I pinned the guns of the other two jacks onto the chassis for extra stablity. The connection point is fairly small, and I get impatient waiting for superglue to dry, so a quick pin (drilling into plastic is as easy as it gets), saved my patience and let me crack on.

The only other thing to pay close attention to is that there are two different knee pads to match the two leg designs. The only difference is in the connection socket on the back of the part, so pay close attention. I shaved all the plugs down anyway to get the parts as tight to the leg as possible, but if you are going for a stock assembly its worth keeping in mind.

I will return to update this post with the final jacks once I get some decent pics.

Till next time, where we look at some servitors.

[Commission) Menoth Vassal

Just finished up a Menoth Vassal as part of the Welsh Open army give away. I think I posted the jack I painted a while ago, can't really remember.

Anyway, this was pretty quick and dirty, took about two hours give or take. The whites are obviously pretty stark, but there is a certain charm to the model.

I also managed to paint two more of the Dreadball commission I am working on, but the pictures are terrible so I will save those for another day.

Finally, among all that I managed to get some more work done on my Nightmare repaint. Not sure why I am repainting this guy in a new scheme, that is not the new scheme for my army, but hey ho. Lots of two brush blending and washes going on here, still a little rough in patches, but its a good step forward. Certainly good practice for the Covergence of Cyriss...